[Supras] Distributor leak solved... I hope

[Bob]

This information applies to NA Supras so I am sending this to both lists I
am on.  My wife's 91 Mr2 had an oil leak coming from the distributor.

Well, I have learned even more about Toyota's and I am more impressed with
the engineering.

I made a couple of phone calls this morning and the local Toyota store
quoted me somewhere in the mid $200 range for the distributor.  

I know that Aaron would have been cheaper but according to the local Toyota
store locator service there wasn't one in South Florida.  No matter what the
price was it most likely would have been a special order with the associated
time delay so I decided to find the bearings locally

Attached you will find a link to a Supra website that describes the
distributor repair perfectly
http://gtfour.supras.org.nz/sw20%20distributor.htm

If you want to do the job make sure you read the instructions COMPLETELY. 

The information is complete and the part numbers for the bearing and seal
were able to be crossed over to a standard part available in the states.

Now I was able to purchase the parts I needed for just under $20.00 but if
you want to do this job you really should BUY the kit from Kbox.ca or Twos
are us.  

The extra cost is well worth the trouble it is to find the parts and they
even include additional seals.  I would have ordered the parts from them but
I hate planning ahead, heck I pulled the car apart on a Saturday knowing how
hard it is to get parts on the weekend

If you do this with local parts try to get a larger thickness seal, there is
plenty of room and when I installed mine I put the seal in farther hoping to
miss the wear on the shaft.  The part number for the o-ring doesn't appear
to be good in the states but it is just a simple o-ring that can be sourced
anywhere

There were two things that were a pita to do.  

The removal of the pin took forever and ruined a couple of my punches. 

The "cog" that engages the end of the cam only fits into the cam one way.
Although it looks like it doesn't matter it turns out that the cog has
different angles on the sides and it took me at least 30 minutes to realize
this.  

It really does look the same and it wasn't until I accidentally put the
distributor in with the rotor pointing the wrong way that I figured this
out.

Given that I started working on GM cars I never even considered that some
engineer would figure out that the distributor should only go in one way.

If you follow the instructions properly this job shouldn't take an hour to
do from start to beer.

Bob